in flux
by wndrw8
Summary: "Right now the loss is unbearable, but they'll cycle back. Someday things will return to the way they were at the prison. When there was a place for everyone and everything seemed possible. Even if it's only for a month. A week." Carol tells Tara about Noah's passing


"_What was scattered_

_gathers._

_What was gathered_

_blows away."_

* * *

Carol would be lying if she said she noticed the girl before Noah died.

Not that Tara is a girl, technically. But she _is_. She and Rosita both emanate this youthful innocence that makes them seem eras away from her. They are the type of women that seek each other and hold tight, like childhood cliques on the playground. It's evident in their eyes when they see one another.

Deep down, Carol wishes she had a female friend like that.

She had Lori for a while. Towards the end, she and Andrea got close, too. But then they were gone and she found herself back in that same old place—carrying on alone.

Carol tries to ignore her feelings, ignore both girls when they are together.

They don't want anything to do with her. She is too old for these types of things anyway.

* * *

Tara does okay after waking up. Carol makes sure of it. There's no Pete anymore (her fault, though she isn't sorry at all), but the worst of the injury is over and now it's just a matter of changing dressings, making sure the girl has enough liquids, enough rest. No stress.

"Where'd you learn how to do this?" Tara asks one night. It's only been three days since she woke up and they're sitting on a bed in the first house. Everyone's gathered in the main room to talk about manning the guard towers and their muffled voices filter in through the open door. "Like, wound dressing and stuff? Someone teach you?"

A half smile flits across Carol's lips. "Maggie's father," she says. "It's a shame you never got to know him."

"I bet he was sweet."

"He was tough. Stubborn." Carol presses down on the wound at the crest of Tara's scalp, smoothing gauze over the healing skin. "That's why Maggie's still around."

Tara exhales, shifting on the bed. It smells like antiseptic and faint mint. The window in the bedroom is open and cold air flurries in, stinging with that pre-winter bite. "Yeah, Maggie's a tough chick," Tara says. She looks down at her hands. "I used to think I was like her."

"But not anymore?"

Tara's eyes shift up to hers. There is something terribly young and intimate about her stare. It's like she's pleading, reaching out to grab hold of someone. "After people first started turning… my sister and I stayed in the apartment for the most part. We never saw anything too bad." She brings her finger up to scratch the top of her nose. "We didn't really know what it was like out there."

Voices rise outside the door: Abraham and Rick. Carol fluffs the pillows behind Tara's head and straightens out the sheets. They feel like silk, high thread count. Something she couldn't have dreamed of having before the world went to shit.

But that's just the way the world works.

She never had female friends before the apocalypse. Wouldn't have met Lori before it. Or Tyreese. Or Daryl. "Surviving isn't all about being tough," Carol says, and helps Tara lie back again in the bed. "Sometimes it's just choosing to wake up in the morning."

Tara looks up at her, eyes wide. A sprinkling of tan freckles covers her nose. Sofia had freckles like that. All bunched together in one spot.

"Okay?" Carol says.

Tara nods softly. "Okay."

She looks so vulnerable right now. Her hair splayed over the pillow and the skin under her eyes so dark with the need for sleep.

No one has told her about Noah yet.

Carol puts her hand on Tara's shoulder and squeezes.

* * *

A week later, Eugene tells Tara about Noah. In retrospect, Carol's not sure how anyone thought that was a good idea. Although Eugene is a little softer around Tara, he's still pretty unpolished and lacks the ability to withhold much of his verbal diarrhea.

Rosita's on a run with Michonne and Sasha, the three of them being thick as thieves lately, and Carol's the only other one around besides Rick.

She finds Tara in the bedroom, sitting on the floor with a journal in her hands. Her eyes are closed. Her hair's down, partially masking her face. But it doesn't hide the way her body trembles with sobs.

Carol is terrified.

"Hey," she says. "Are you alright?"

Tara lets the journal drop onto the floor. She bends her legs and rests her head on her knees. It's a level of devastation that Carol just can't connect with anymore and she forgets what to do at first, how to act. Aren't these things supposed to come naturally? She once was a mother, a friend, though it's hard sometimes to remember.

After a moment, Carol sits down on the floor next to her. "Calm down," she says softly, and begins rubbing Tara's back. "Breathe."

It feels very much like something she could've once done with Sofia. Maybe after having a fight with Ed. Sitting her child down in the oasis of her locked bedroom, into safety, sheltering her daughter with her body, the only way she knew how.

"You have to calm down. You're still recovering."

Tara takes a deep breath in and lifts her head. Her face is splotchy—eyes swollen, red. Her hair is still damp from the shower she took earlier, the first since the accident that she was able to take alone. "Sorry," she manages. "I swear I'm not really such a punk ass crybaby."

"You're not a crybaby, Tara."

Tara exhales and leans back. They sit like that, closer than Carol would like. It's petrifying to sit so close to someone who needs so much. To be the only one. It's like their life is a weight.

And she has lost so much already…

"Do you think we'll be okay here?" Tara asks. "Like, really okay?"

Sunshine spills in from the window to their left. It warms the carpet where they sit. Carol remembers sitting in the dark of that solitary room in the prison, thinking how she'd never get to see the sunlight again and how much of a defeat that seemed.

Little gifts. Little moments.

Right now the loss is unbearable, but they'll cycle back. Someday things will return to the way they were at the prison. When there was a place for everyone and everything seemed possible. Even if it's only for a month. A week.

"I'm not sure," Carol says finally. "But I know you won't be alone."

* * *

Three weeks later, they all gather in the first house for dinner. Maggie and Abraham are manning the kitchen which leaves Carol to wander, feeling useless. So she sits with Rick and Glenn for a while before Rosita finds her and drags her into the master bathroom where Tara stands, applying mascara.

"Look!" she says, upon seeing Carol. "Rosita found some on her last run."

Rosita blushes. Carol can see now the shadow above the girl's eyelids, the faint toner on her slim cheekbones. The bathroom is tinted with that soft, make up smell. The scent of powder and perfume. It's been so long… the smell tugs at something inside her. "It was stupid," Rosita admits. "But I thought we might have some fun with it."

There's a glass of moonshine on the sink and Tara hands it to her. Carol takes the glass in her hand, weighing it for a moment before forcing back a swallow. The alcohol burns through her system. Bright and burning and fresh. "It wasn't stupid," she says. "But you're doing that wrong."

"What?"

"That eye shadow," she says to Tara. "Here. Let me."

Tara gives her a look. Shrugs. Places the packet of shadow in Carol's hands and closes her eyes, waiting expectantly. Carol takes a towel and wipes off some of the thick powder, then starts light on the brow bone, filling in darker in the creases, sweeping wide. When Tara opens her eyes again, with the coloring and shading, they pop.

"So pretty," Rosita coos. "How did you do that?"

"Believe it or not, I used to be very good at this. Once upon a time."

"When?" Tara asks, giving an impish grin. "A hundred years ago?"

Carol is so surprised by her own laughter that she almost doesn't recognize it at first. "Hey, watch it," she says, but there is no bite to her words. These kids are not kids, really—they don't need her for protection. They are not Sofia or Lizzie or Mika.

They don't need her but they will have her; that's the way family is.

"Hey, Carol?" Rosita giggles and looks at herself in the mirror. "Can you redo mine like hers?"

The glass gets passed again. This time the moonshine tastes warmer. Less of a burn.

These are the memories Carol will draw upon years from, now when death finally confronts her. So close to darkness and alone again for the last time, she will conjure the sound of Sofia's laughter, the feel of Daryl's arms around her after Terminus, the smell of makeup and moonshine in the bathroom.


End file.
